In the Zaatari refugee camp in Jordan, the National Post’s Tom Blackwell hears tales of horror and terror from Syrians fleeing a civil war. In a two-part report, he also finds the sprawling camp is beset by problems.

Huddled in a cavernous reception tent, faces creased with exhaustion and shock, the newest arrivals in Jordan’s refugee metropolis offer a grim testament to the horrors unfolding next door in Syria.

As diplomats theorize about any political solution to the vicious civil war, ordinary Syrians say they continue to face unspeakable violence at home, enough to drive more than 1,000 people a day through the desert and across the border to the sprawling Zaatari refugee camp.

Naima, 45, said she and her husband came this week from Daraa, the southern city where the Syrian protest movement was born two years ago, now held by opposition fighters.

Speaking from behind a tattered blanket they have strung up for a little privacy, she says the Assad regime’s tank shells and air strikes are regularly hitting civilian homes, while six of her cousins were stabbed to death by government troops in the last week.

We sleep and as soon as we wake up we are in terror and fear

“Buildings are destroyed, and you find people in the street killed or slaughtered,” said the woman, who like other refugees at Zaatari refused to give her last name out of concern for reprisals. “We sleep and as soon as we wake up we are in terror and fear.”

What is more, any return to normalcy would seem a remote prospect for the couple, as their new home — now Jordan’s fifth-largest community and the world’s second-biggest refugee camp — undergoes a striking evolution.

Outsiders may see Zaatari as a temporary safe haven, but it is fast mutating into a far more permanent settlement, with all the problems, and more, of any crowded city. Canadian police, in fact, are on the way to help.

Ramshackle, refugee-run shops line the unpaved main street, ironically dubbed the Champs-Élysées. There are meat markets, fruit stands, a launderette and restaurants hawking shawarma and other Middle Eastern staples. Elsewhere, someone has started a chicken farm, and one of the market stalls sells the live birds.

Though most of the half-million refugees that have flooded Jordan are settling in towns, about 110,000 have crammed into the dusty confines of the camp’s 5.3 square kilometres, with about 1,500 more showing up every day. Smaller numbers are returning to Syria at the same time.

“The idea is to transform it slowly and gradually into a normal village … to put in a system of street names, house numbers,” said Iris Blom, an administrator with the United Nations’ High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR). “I don’t think the camp will be emptied any time soon.”

Even health care here has a stamp of normalcy. In nine months, doctors have performed 155 caesarean sections and delivered 200 babies among the more than 200,000 cases handled by a Moroccan-run hospital at Zaatari, said Colonel Abdulwahed Baite, the medical chief.

Despite tentative plans for an international peace conference, any resolution to the two-year-old Syrian conflict would appear far off. And even if the government of Bashar al-Assad does eventually fall, many of Zaatari’s current residents would likely stay, or be replaced by government supporters who feared reprisals under any new regime, said Ms. Blom.

Meanwhile, the camp is grappling with various challenges, including a chronic shortage of funding to handle its daily expansion and a persistent crime problem. Some refugees are stealing tents and even hard-sided caravans, and selling them outside the camp, said Ms. Blom, adding police are now starting to seize the purloined equipment.

Kharbeh, 50, who escaped from Daraa about six months ago, said some of the sought-after caravans are commandeered by other refugees, who then demand rent from fellow refugees for the UN-funded housing.

Two other women said drug trafficking is widespread, with one suspect being arrested last week, though they could not say what drugs were being traded.

Vandalism of latrines, water taps and other shared facilities is also common, said Ms. Blom. One refugee delegation admitted the children were doing the damage, but said they could not control them.

Indeed, teenage boys and young men are behind some of the vandalism, an unfortunate outlet for the anger and frustration many feel, said Mary Jo Baca, a mental-health counsellor with the group International Medical Corps.

“If you’re a young male and you’re in Zaatari, you either feel angry that you’re not in Syria fighting … or you feel shameful you’re in a safe location,” she said. “They’re having a serious internal struggle.”

All the same, they are mostly “sweet” young men, many of whom have been sent to Jordan by parents worried for their safety.

One teen had balked at revealing the source of his troubles, before tearfully telling his story. He had come home one day to find his mother, afraid he would be recruited into a rebel army, holding a knife to her throat and threatening to kill herself unless he left immediately, Ms. Baca said.

They’re having a serious internal struggle

Her U.S.-based non-governmental organization is now putting special focus on adolescent and pre-adolescent males, realizing they could be here for years and without help turn into citizens no country would welcome.

“It’s important to think about those things today, rather than waiting … and realizing ‘Oh God, we’ve lost that one’ … He’s going to be in conflict with the law because he doesn’t know how to articulate his frustrations,” she said.

Refugees say their troubles do not just stem from their compatriots’ actions. Kharbeh said some Jordanian police demand as much as $1,000 to let them leave the camp, though legally they are free to go. Ms. Blom said she has heard similar complaints, but cannot confirm them.

Meanwhile, she said Canadian police are planning to come to the camp to help train Jordanian officers providing security.

Kharbeh also complained the drinking water trucked into the camp is not safe, giving her children diarrhea, while the bimonthly rations of rice, lentils, cracked wheat and canned tuna are too little. Those who brought enough money with them from Syria, or have jobs at Zaatari, eat well, the rest not so, she said.

Ms. Blom confirmed many of the refugees are unhappy and complain regularly about the quality of food and the cleanliness of facilities, though she called Zaatari “five-star” compared to other refugee camps she has worked in.

“It’s a very, very difficult camp — the mentality of the people is difficult,” said the UNHCR veteran.

“They think that we are not doing enough for them. Maybe some of them have lost so much, they feel we should do better.”

Maybe some of them have lost so much, they feel we should do better

Back at the reception tent, the recent arrivals do offer a reminder of the traumas that bedevil much of Zaatari’s burgeoning population.

Three women crouched in a corner begin to tell their story when a Jordanian fighter jet suddenly roars overhead, inadvertently reinforcing their harrowing tale. The sound sends a toddler hopping into her mother’s arms, wide-eyed and clinging tightly.

“When there was bombing she was very afraid,” explains her mother, Noor, who arrived the night before after a four-day trek from the Damascus suburb of Douma. “[Government] forces were targeting randomly, they would shoot civilians and members of the [Syrian] Free Army.”

Noor’s story, though impossible to confirm, does suggest unmerciful tactics by Assad forces. Tank bombardments and air strikes seemed to have deliberately targeted bakeries in Douma at times when most shoppers were picking up their bread and struck the local mosque during prayers, she said.

The mother had a blunt request of countries like Canada: “We want the international community to bomb Assad’s palace and kill him.”